After 7 years as a research scientist, Daily was appointed as an associate professor in the Department of Biological Sciences and as a senior fellow at the Institute of International Studies (both at Stanford University) in 2002.
[5] She has since published a dozen further books, including The Power of Trees (2012) and One Tree (2018) with Charles J. Katz, Green Growth that Works: Natural Capital Policy and Finance Mechanisms from Around the World (2019) with Lisa Mandle, Zhiyun Ouyang, and James Salzman, and Rural Livelihood and Environmental Sustainability in China (2020) with Jie Li, Shuzhuo Li, and Marcus Feldman.
"[5][7] In later years, the core partnership expanded to include the University of Minnesota, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and the Stockholm Resilience Center, together with over three hundred collaborating institutions.
Its signature software, InVEST, is open source, co-developed with users, and now used in 185 countries to reveal the values of nature in specific decisions, and the risks and costs of its loss.
As co-founder and Stanford faculty director[8] of the Natural Capital Project, Daily "serves as [the organization's] chief emissary to financial and government leaders.
Their proposals include improving the status of women by giving them equal education, reducing racism and religious prejudice, reforming the agricultural system, and shrinking the growing gap between rich and poor.
Examples include: "Water Quality Improvements by Wetlands" by Katherine Ewel[25] and "Ecosystem Services in a Modern Economy: Gunnison County, Colorado" by Andrew Wilcox and John Harte.
Such recognition could provide a more integrated and compelling basis for action than those suggested by a single-species or biodiversity protection for the simple reason that the impacts of those services on humans are more immediate and undeniably important.
One chapter describes how New York "decided to meet federal requirements to improve water quality with a less expensive, though more controversial, option of protecting watershed integrity through land purchases and development limits, rather than adopt the technological solution of a multibillion dollar treatment facility.
"[29] While another chapter offers "an assessment of plans to manage and reduce greenhouse gas emissions by developing a worldwide system of carbon trading patterned on the U.S. experience with pollution.
"[29] Kenneth Arrow remarked that Daily and Ellison "have delineated the new movement to make conservation of natural resources financially rewarding and illustrate in a lively and probing manner many cases of profitable activities that also preserve the biosphere.
He goes on to say that the book "avoids the fallacy that the market is the solution to our environmental protection challenges and that, if allowed to operate free of government intervention, it can somehow make the policymaking choices less problematic and the tradeoffs less daunting" and that "it challenges elements of environmental orthodoxy that hold that the market, because of its short-term orientation and emphasis on profit over conservation, is an intrinsic threat to nature and the only solution is increased government oversight and financial commitment.
[5][32][33][34][35] She has received the 2018 BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in the category of Ecology and Conservation Biology, jointly with Georgina Mace for developing vital tools facilitating science-based policies “to combat species loss.”[36] Daily has authored, coauthored and/or edited five books.